The U.S. Constitution, written in 1787 and ratified by nine of the original 13 states a year later, is the world’s longest-surviving written constitution. But that doesn’t mean it has stayed the same ...

Two hundred and fifty years after Americans declared independence from Britain and began writing the first state constitutions, it’s not the Constitution that’s dead. It’s the idea of amending it.

Excerpted from “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” by Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. We the People. The ...